Right Wing Has A Copyright On Silence In Marianne Hall Case

May 5, 1985|By Howard Means of The Sentinel Staff

WASHINGTON — By now some crackerjack investigative reporter probably has discovered exactly how Marianne Mele Hall came to get her $70,000-a-year job as chairman of the federal Copyright Royalty Tribunal. The best I could do -- all I had the stomach for, really -- was to call the tribunal and ask a woman who identified herself as Hall's ''aide'' to read me the chairman's resume.

''I can't seem to find a copy of the resume,'' the aide said after a long pause. Did the chairman ever practice copyright law, I asked, copyrights being the business of the tribunal. (Pause) ''I can't answer that.'' Well, does the chairman have a law degree? Yes, from Rutgers University. And has she ever practiced law? The aide could answer that one too: Hall had a private practice -- so private, it emerged, that she worked out of her house.

''Is there any chance that if I call back tomorrow, you could find her resume?'' (Pause) ''I don't think so,'' the aide said.

All right, that's Washington, and don't slay the aide. Her boss is in a pickle, and the duty of an aide in these situations is to clam up. But maybe we better backtrack.

In case you came in late on the Hall saga, the matter at hand is this: Marianne Mele Hall either subscribes to or at the least has lent her name to the theory that black people in these United States are jungle bunnies.

On the biographical form she submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved her seven-year appointment to the tribunal on April 2, Hall listed herself as co-author of a book that criticizes blacks for insisting ''on preserving their jungle freedoms, their women, their avoidance of personal responsibility and their abhorrence of the work ethic.''

The book also takes a shot at sociologists for putting ''blacks on welfare so that they can continue their jungle freedoms of leisure time and subsidized procreation,'' a redundancy after the first salvo.

Hall now claims that she was only editor of the book and that the views contained therein are ''as a lay person . . . repugnant to me.'' By the same logic, folks who work on kiddie-porn movies presumably can find the sexual exploitation of children repugnant. But that's not the issue for me. There's no absence in Washington or society at large of self- aggrandizing idiots packed with banal views. It would be nice if they would all dry up and blow away, but they won't.

Nor, for me, is the issue the ease with which Hall tailors her job descriptions to suit the season: co-author of a book one day; editor the next; teeny, weeny, minor, little editor who didn't even know about anything when the storm starts blowing. Resume inflation is as old as job application. So is backpedaling.

For that matter, I can't get very exercised over the torrent of outrage that has been pouring down on Hall from such outfits as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Congressional Black Caucus and just about every Democratic congressman who can find a microphone. The real news would have been if they had said nothing.

What is appalling, though, is that the outrage, the cries for resignation, have all come from the Democrats and the interest groups of the left. Where are the voices of outrage on the right? Is this really a partisan matter -- one of those hideously predictable Washington bladder battles to be fought with all the usual defenses: a little stonewalling here, some damage control there and hope that it all blows over?

If so, it's a horrible condemnation of the political right and a terribly alarming one. It raises the specter of whether at its heart the great ideological divide in America isn't over the proper role of government or the proper sweep of its powers but over whether black people in this country are jungle bunnies or not.

Silence isn't judicious in this kind of business; silence isn't party loyalty or good soldiering for the White House that nominated Hall. It's one thing only: assent.